CHOYCE: Beached sunfish rescue evokes deep feelings

The whole complement of rescuers eventually manages to carry the mola mola towards the ocean in hopes the fish would survive.

Shortly after noon on Sept. 7 of this year I was just finishing a bowl of soup and thinking that it was a rather dull and ordinary day all around when the phone rang. It was my daughter Sunyata calling to tell me there was some kind of sea creature — a porpoise perhaps — beached on the rocks near the headland here in Lawrencetown. She had been alerted by a phone call from some animal rescue people and they were looking for someone to check out the situation.

After grabbing some wetsuits, my wife Linda and I jumped in the car and drove through the rain to the ocean. We put on rain gear and walked the perimeter of the top of the headland to see what we could see. We’d been involved in several animal rescue scenarios before and knew full well that sometimes you can help and other times there is absolutely nothing to be done. But I’m a great supporter of worthy but lost causes, and tromping around the headland on this stormy wet day seemed like just the thing to raise my spirits.

We didn’t see the fish at first but then we spotted Sunyata and another good Samaritan down below beside what some might call a most odd-looking denizen of the deep. It was like nothing I’d ever encountered and larger than any fish I’d seen in these waters before. We cautiously scrambled down the very front of the headland, sliding in ankle-deep mud until we reached the rocks below. The tide was out and the “monster” fish was far above the water line and wedged hopelessly (or so it seemed) between giant boulders.

At this point, there were four of us and Linda and I helped Sunyata, who was trying to get a tarp under the fish. I reckoned it was in the range of 160-180 kilograms, short and squat, taller than it was long with a very large eye on each side of its head. It immediately reminded me of one of the aliens in the bar scene in the original Star Wars movie. Sunyata thought it was some kind of ocean sunfish. But the name didn’t seem to fit. I’d never heard of an ocean sunfish, nor seen one in my entire aquatic life. Nonetheless, here was a strange and sad creature of the sea in deep trouble, and it did indeed seem entirely impossible that the four of us could possibly heft it back into the sea.

It had a kind of blowhole that we watched carefully as we started throwing water over him. (I’ll refer to him as a he since he had a kind of masculine aura that reminded me of a clueless well-meaning schoolmate from years gone by who was always picked on by bullies.) We weren’t really sure if the poor guy was still alive or not, and all the signs most certainly suggested that this would be his final resting place. It all looked most futile.

Strangely, as if all things in life are now filmed and put before the public as reality television, the Hope for Wildlife cameraman, Andrew Killawee, was on hand to film whatever we would attempt to do.

So we did what we could. We kept splashing our guest with sea water from the pools as we continued to wrestle the tarp beneath him. Eventually we were able to inch him, with great difficulty, back toward the sea, now at least 100 metres or more from where we stood.

If you haven’t found yourself trying to lug an impossibly heavy sea creature while sloshing around over large, wet, seaweed-covered rocks fraught with sharp barnacles, you’re probably missing one of life’s most memorable challenges. So there we were, lugging and lifting and very much hoping he was still alive.

Then the eye blinked and the body heaved. Splash more water. One, two, three. Lift. Each combined effort gained us mere centimetres forward to the ocean. The wind was roaring and the waves were big choppy chunks of sea slamming down before us, and we still had no idea what could be done even if we got the fish into the ocean. The relentless waves would most certainly drive him back.

Another woman arrived on the scene (I never caught her name, sorry) and joined the effort. More inching forward, slipping, sliding, scraping on barnacles and getting cut from the fish’s sharp fins. Rain and wind, to top it off. Hopeless for sure but here were — trying.

Word had somehow spread and, lo and behold, I saw Jason Beach from the Kannon Beach Surf shop and another lad, both in wetsuits and headed our way. That changed the equation entirely. Soon after, Andrew from MARS arrived. In fact, I think he actually said, “Hi, I’m Andrew from Mars. I’ll do what I can.” Given the fact that our fish buddy most certainly looked like an alien, Andrew from Mars made perfect sense. It was only later that I realized MARS stood for Marine Animal Response Society.

We were now moving forward by metres instead of centimetres. We all slipped under the beast at one time or another, pinning a leg for a few seconds before the gang lifted again.

Once we made it to the waves, Sunyata, Linda, Jason and Dan (who turned out to be a surfer from Australia) got our fish into the sea and the pounding surf while Andrew and I ran shoreward to put on wetsuits.

When we returned, Jason and Dan had the sunfish out in the waves. We joined them and discussed strategies. Anytime people come together in what appears to be a most hopeless cause to try to do a good deed, I am thrilled to be part of this most positive human moment and it restores my faith in humanity. This was one of those moments.

The waves pummelled us as the big fish wallowed in the water and we repeatedly lost a hand-grip and had to re-establish contact. But it had become clear that it was not good enough just to heft a fish back into the ocean. He needed to be in deep water. But the waves just kept pushing us back.

Jason and Dan were the most efficient at keeping hold of the beast, and they already had cut hands and Dan had a bloody nose. But our spirits were high and it was a true communal effort. We were at the very tip of the headland and we needed to go one way or the other to find deep water. I’m not sure who said it first, but the plan was hatched to lug our friend west through the belligerent waves toward Stoney Beach until we rounded the point and could deposit him in the deeper waters of the Lawrencetown River, which spills out into the sea there.

The fish seemed to move occasionally, but he’d been beached for a long time and, assuming he was still even alive, he was obviously exhausted. The waves and wind conspired to exhaust the humans as well. But the water was blissfully warm — for Nova Scotia, that is — invariably tempered by those terrifying tropical storms to the south that were ravaging the Caribbean.

And then suddenly we were there. No more stones for footholds, fewer waves pounding us back. We’d found the river current moving out to sea. Our sunfish now quietly slipped below the surface. We treaded water, waiting to see what would happen next. I think I spotted something farther out but whatever it was, it quickly vanished.

And that was that. Our hope was the deeper water, the persistent outgoing current, the comfort of being back in the sea might all be factors that allowed our guest to survive.

But we’ll never know.

As I waded ashore over those slippery barnacled rocks, I had a flashback of Canada Day many years ago, when I had brought a drowning woman ashore here at this very location. A drowning woman who did not survive. Those dark and desperate moments never leave you altogether, and they return at just such a time as this. The sea is both delightful and deadly. It gives but it also takes.

But that momentary memory quickly gave way to a kind of damp, fatigued euphoria. A small group of regular folks had come together on this stormy afternoon to try and save a really weird looking fish — because it seemed like the right thing to do.

And it was.

Back home, after a hot shower, Linda and I both realized we still smelled like fish. The smell lasted for a couple of days.

A bit of quick research on the Internet revealed that we had saved (at least I like to believe we saved) a mola mola, often referred to as an ocean sunfish. They mostly live in warmer waters than ours and I daresay somehow those tropical disturbances sent him far northward to us, leaving him weak and stranded and ready to die at Lawrencetown. Adults apparently weigh in at 250 to 1,000-plus kilograms. In 1910, one was caught that weighed 1,600 kilograms. That said, ours must have been a baby.

The mola mola is believed to be the heaviest bony fish in the world and their diet consists primarily of jellyfish. They are killed by the thousands if not millions each year as bycatch — unwanted fish that die when caught and then are tossed back. In some parts of the world they are “finned” — their fins are cut off and they are tossed back to sea because they are wrongly considered to be “bait thieves.”

Reading about the Mola mola only reminded me that we’ve done some serious damage to the other living beings with whom we share this planet. And we should damn well try our best to be kind to our cousins any opportunity we get.